David Robson: 4 make the cut for All America

Sunday

Jan 29, 2012 at 12:01 AMJan 29, 2012 at 1:29 PM

For new annual flowers or vegetables, nothing has the allure quite like the All America Selection designation.

David Robson

For new annual flowers or vegetables, nothing has the allure quite like the All America Selection designation. The AAS designation has been going strong for more than 80 years and has covered many standbys still grown in gardens.

There are only four award winners for 2012. Last year there were twice as many, including the wonderful Lizzano and Terenzo cherry tomatoes.

Only one flower made the cut this year, and that stretches the definition of “flower.” It’s the “Black Olive” ornamental pepper.

Black Olive is similar to the garden standard Black Pearl. Both have the green to dark purple foliage that can look almost black and contrasts perfectly with the traditional green of other annuals. Both grow about one to two feet high with a similar spread. Both have purple to whitish-purple flowers.

They each produce a black-purple fruit that the foliage almost hides. However, Black Olive fruit will turn red, providing another sharp contrast to the surroundings.

Plants are easy to start from seed, but just about any garden center or nursery will carry bedding plants. The decorative peppers are one of the latest garden trends, providing consistent color from late spring until frost.

Black Olive also has an added benefit of being extremely heat tolerant, producing flowers and fruits even when it’s above 90 degrees. You’ll still need to water the full-sun tolerant plant.

You can grow the ornamental peppers in containers or in the ground.

The bedding plant winner is a flower, which seems sort of discombobulated when you think that a vegetable is a flower winner. However, a bedding plant winner is also one that looks great in both the garden and in the greenhouse ready for sale.

That’s Summer Jewel Pink salvia.

Plants are similar in size to the Black Olive pepper, rarely reaching higher than two feet. Foliage is a traditional yellowish green.

The dense flower heads are pink but still attractive to hummingbirds, which thrive on the nectar. The compact plants produce a large quantity of the upright flowers, especially if the old bloom stalks are constantly deadheaded when more than half of the stem is bloomed out.

Summer Jewel Pink is noted for blooming two weeks earlier than the typical pink salvia, though if you buy bedding plants instead of starting the plants yourself, you’ll probably never notice.

Salvias can tolerate heat and drought well and do well in containers, especially if you need the softening color pink provides.

“Faerie F1” watermelon is one of the two vegetable winners. It is different from your typical watermelon, and you need to remember that it doesn’t look quite right as it grows in the garden. Otherwise, you’ll be trying everything to change its outward appearance.

Instead of the typical green skin or green striped skin on a watermelon, Faerie F1 has a yellow skin with thin green stripes. You might think it’s anemic.

(F1 refers to the fact that it is a first-generation hybrid and saving the seeds isn’t recommended if you want to get the same thing.)

The fruit is your watermelon red. Like the current trend of watermelons, it doesn’t take up a lot of room in the refrigerator. The melon is about the size of a half piece of paper folded the short way. The fruit weighs about five pounds and is between six to eight inches, globe-shaped. There are seeds to spit.

Like all watermelons, you’ll need room for it to grow, but in this case only about 11 feet by 11 feet. That may seem like a lot, but it’s about one-third what you’d normally need. Still, that may be too big for most gardens, but you are guaranteed with proper water and fertilizing more than just a couple of watermelons.

The last AAS winner is “Cayennetta” F1 pepper, which by its name should give you a clue that it’s going to be a spicy type of pepper. In this case, mildly spicy. It’s not a hot chili type.

Think more of the banana pepper shape than bell pepper. It’s about three to four inches long, with green colors maturing to bright red.

Cayennetta F1 is your typical dark green leafed pepper plant, growing somewhere between two and three feet high, though the plant is bushier than normal. The white flowers precede the heavy crop of peppers hanging like elongated teardrops.

Like all the plants so far, Cayennetta F1 prefers full sun and a well-drained organic soil for best results. Unlike the Black Olive decorative pepper, Cayennetta F1 isn’t heat tolerant, which means flowers will abort when the temperatures climb past 90 degrees.

However, like Black Olive, you can grow Cayennetta F1 in a container, though it will take a more careful eye to make sure it gets the water it needs.

You can order seeds of Cayennetta F1 to grow your own transplants. Nurseries and garden centers probably will stock some of the plants for sale.

David Robson is a specialist with University of Illinois Extension. For more gardening information, go to www.extension.uiuc.edu/mg.

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